


The Bleeding Heart

by thoroughly_inktroverted



Series: An Ailment of the Heart [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: A Stitch In Time, Also Kelas is in here, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Basically humans get sick when their true love is unrequited, Disease, Dying Julian Bashir, Fluff and Angst, Heartbreak, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Julian needs his lizard boyfriends okay, Kelas Parmak is precious and i refuse to hear otherwise, Like really sick, M/M, Mortally Ill Julian Bashir, Original Character Death(s), Polyamory, Post-Episode: s05e09 What We Leave Behind, Sickness, bleeding heart, happy ending I promise, julian is dying and garak doesn't know because this is post canon and he's on Cardassia, silly humans and their silly weaknesses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 03:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17858996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thoroughly_inktroverted/pseuds/thoroughly_inktroverted
Summary: Humans are fragile, love is deadly, and it will come for him eventually.Or,In which Julian's love is killing him and he refuses to help himself. Thankfully, someone else does it for him.





	1. Cold

**Author's Note:**

> _Doctor Bashir makes an important realization when it's too late to do anything about it._

Doctor Julian Bashir wished he had never put a name to his feelings. Not now. Not when the very reason for their existence was walking away from him, perhaps for the final time. He hadn’t expected the realization until it had hit, watching the airlock close with a hiss that resonated in his very bones. He hadn’t expected it because he knew better. He knew better. But as is so often the case among humans with these matters, his own mind betrayed him.

 _I love you_ , his own voice whispered in his ear. He could hear the distant sounds of the docking clamps releasing and the even fainter hum of the transport vessel’s engines engaging warp drive, bound for Cardassia. It was a one way trip. _I love you_ , the thought rose again, more urgent. A cold dread sank beneath his skin as he turned away.

Julian returned to the infirmary only briefly to collect his things, grab a few PADDs, and put one of his most responsible nurses in charge. He hardly remembered any of it, hardly even remembered getting to his room through his haze of internalized anguish and foreboding. Because the doctor knew better. He _knew_. And yet here he was, awaiting his inevitable passing.

Because humans were fragile, even enhanced individuals such as himself, and love was deadly. And he, Doctor Julian Bashir, had fallen in love with Elim Garak. A Cardassian. A dear friend. A man he would most likely never see again.

He would need to get his affairs in order. He would need to send farewell letters to his parents, to Miles and Keiko, to Jake and Nog and even Ezri, who had returned to Trill to seek the wisdom and company of fellow hosts. Julian wished he could have been able to contact Odo. He never quite knew where he stood with the man, but he liked to think they were friends. He hoped they were friends. At the very least, he hoped that wherever Benjamin Sisko was, on this plane or the next, he knew that Julian had valued his time serving him. That he had valued him. Commander Kira would find out when he applied for permanent leave with formal documentation of his reasoning for the permanent records, but he would tell her himself in person. He was all she had left on the station, and now he was leaving, too.

He didn’t once entertain the thought of contacting Garak. It was bad enough that he was going to die without a rejection causing more pain and suffering beforehand. He would set aside a letter for him to be sent after Julian’s death with explanations as to why. He would tell the truth with wishes for forgiveness and no real hope to back it up.

He would try to leave as quietly as possible and hope it was enough to spare the feelings of his loved ones. He owed them all that much, at least.


	2. Fragile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The inevitable happens, and for all his preparation, Julian isn't ready._

Three days went by during which the doctor could feel the tension building inside him, as if his body was holding its breath, and Julian made plans to meet Kira in her quarters after hours outside of their semi-regular lunches. She had been trying her best to take his mind off of the silence Garak had left behind, and consequently, their lunches were filled of talk of day to day life on the station interspersed with old tales and jokes from times long gone. They laughed, they smiled, and they pretended their entire world, however small it had been, hadn’t just crumbled away in a few short weeks.

For a short time, it gave him a small semblance of peace. He could think, almost for a moment, that all was right and everything was back the way it should be. But it all fell apart when he referenced a piece of classic Terran literature only to receive blank confusion in response. The full weight of Garak’s absence fell on him then and they finished the rest of their lunch in silence.

Things were different after that. They no longer reminisced quite so much, and Julian was careful to limit the topics of conversation to things that wouldn’t remind him of Garak, not that it ever worked. If Kira noticed his efforts, which she surely did, she said nothing. He, in turn, did his best not to remind her of Odo. It was the least he could do.

It finally happened on the day before he was to inform Kira of his inevitable demise - exactly one week after Garak left for Cardassia, presumably never to return.

He was rearranging a few PADDs on his desk when the infirmary doors opened. His head snapped up when he heard a long bout of nasty coughing, his heart sinking when he saw who it was. Standing in the doorway was a young human woman in engineering gold. She was hunched over, tears streaming down her face and a hand clamped tightly over her chest. Blood oozed between her fingers, dark and thick and blacker than night. “D-doctor Bashir,” she gasped, shaking violently in shock.

Julian dropped his PADDs and went to her, forcing his hands to still the tremble that had begun there. He took her shoulders gently and guided her to a bed. “Ensign Byrne, I need you to try and calm yourself. Panicking will only make it hurt worse.”

He eased her hand away from her chest as he took up his medical tricorder. The blood had originated in the center of her chest, somewhere beneath her uniform, and he did not need to look at his scans to know what it was. The condition was far too common. Ensign Byrne began sobbing. “He rejected me,” she cried. “Said he had a childhood friend on Betazed he was still waiting for.”

“May I?” He asked gently, gesturing to her shoulder. She nodded, turning her face away. He eased the top of her uniform down away from her shoulder, doing his best to preserve her modesty, and examining her sternum with a heavy heart. There was no wound, no gash or burn or opened scar. The blood was seeping up through the layers of muscle tissue and out through the epidermis directly above where the heart would be. The area around it had turned a deathly gray and her veins shown as black as the blood on her hands and clothes. Julian’s breath hitched despite himself. It was happening too fast. At this rate…

The distraught woman reached for him, clutching desperately at his sleeve. Her blue eyes were deep with fear, pain and understanding. “I’ll die tonight, won't I,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but a fact.

He let out a shaky breath, closing his tricorder. The soft snap was the sound of a death sentence. “Tomorrow morning at the very latest,” he said quietly. _If you’re unlucky_ , he didn’t say.

Ensign Byrne closed her eyes, pulling her stained sleeves back up, not bothering to button her collar. She turned her body away from him, and Julian left to find a Hypospray that might temporarily ease her pain and make arrangements for her death.

The doctor could hear his heart pounding in his ears. This was his fate. He was to spend his final moments confined to a Biobed writhing in pain, lamenting a life lost to wretched circumstance and wishing he had never allowed love to touch him as his blood slowly turned black and his heart withered and died. And Kira would be all alone in her crumbled world, and Miles would rage and blame Ezri, and Ezri would hurt for him in that way that she did. His mother would cry and his father would mourn the loss of his greatest creation, and Jake would tell stories of him to his younger sibling whom Julian would never meet, and Garak… Garak would get his letter on Cardassia long after he had passed, and perhaps from time to time, he would remember the lonely doctor he had left adrift in space.

Humans were fragile, and love was deadly, and it would come for him eventually. 

“Doctor Bashir!”

The Hypospray for Ensign Byrne slipped from his fingers just before he reached her bedside as his vision darkened. He doubled over, clutching at his chest as it started to burn. Fear flooded him as the burn traveled from his heart, through his chest, and ignited a fire in his very skin and he knew. The clock had started the countdown. Doctor Julian Subatoi Bashir, Chief Medical Officer of Deep Space Nine, was officially living on borrowed time.

When the haze had cleared some, Julian was on his knees, a rather sizable splatter of blood covering his hands and the floor beneath him. It was still red, still alive, but there was no denying its darker tint. His nurses had run to him when they saw him go down, must of them just returning from their own lunch breaks. They asked him question after question that was lost on his ears, trying to get him to stand. He hardly budged, staring down at the blood on his hands. A faded, raspy voice caught his attention.

Ensign Byrne gazed down at him from up on the bed, sorrow in her dimming eyes. Her skin had taken on an unhealthy pallid hue, trails of black streaming from the corner of her mouth. “You, too,” she croaked. She took a shuddering breath, wincing from the pain. He noticed how the black veins and gray, dying skin had spread from her chest to her throat and hands. “ _You, too_.”

Julian said nothing. He just hauled himself up and went about cleaning his mess. He had a nurse give her a new, uncontaminated Hypospray, though potential contamination hardly mattered much for her anymore. He sat on the edge of a console nearby, ignoring his nurses’ pitying looks and the sticky feeling of blood on his clothes, and he listened to her tell them all everything she still had left to do, from the letters to her loved ones sitting on her nightstand that she had hoped she wouldn’t have to send (penned out on paper in the old fashioned way) to the gray tabby cat in her quarters still waiting for her to come home and feed him, and everything in between. 

He watched her slip into a deep sleep two hours later, watched as the gray and black took over the rest of her body and her heart rate began to fall. Three hours after that, the lights on the promenade had dimmed for the night and all but two of his nurses had gone home, and he gave the time of death for the young Ensign Kimberly Alice Byrne of Earth, aged 23, cause of death: Bleeding Heart Syndrome.

He left that night feeling as if he’d watched himself die in the Ensign’s place.

_Me, too_ , he kept thinking, over and over again. _Me, too._


	3. Heartbroken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Kira learns she's loosing the only friend she has left._

Kira Nerys stood with Julian Bashir in her quarters and cried for the only friend she had left. She cried, and she screamed, and she raged, and in the end, she held him close like she had never done, with her hands in his hair and her face hidden in his shoulder.

“Was it Ezri?” She asked finally in the silence that followed. She had yet to let him go.

“No,” he said.

“Jadzia?”

He shook his head. “Just a crush at first. I never let it become anything more when she made it clear that to do so would mean rejection. I knew better. After… I loved her like a sister more than anything. Or a dear friend, I think. That was too long ago for this, anyway.”

“So… Miles, then.” 

Julian couldn't help a bitter laugh. “No, not Miles. We were close, but not _that_ close. Besides, he's married, and I knew better.”

(He should have _known better_.)

Kira sighed, finally pulling away. She brushed the wrinkles from his clothes, then rested her hands on his shoulders, staring into his eyes. Julian had the uncomfortable feeling that she was peering straight through him to his soul, digging up his secrets one by one. “Julian…” she said quietly, shaking her head in disbelief. He looked away. “No, Julian, you… you didn't. _Tell me_ you didn't.”

He shook his head, feeling his eyes begin to sting as his mask fell. “ _I did_ ,” he gasped through the sudden tightening of his throat.

Kira's hands were on his face, gently brushing his tears from his eyes. “You stupid, stupid man,” she said, her voice breaking. “He's not coming back, you foolish human. He's _not coming back_.”

His chest burned as she pulled him close again, and he cried, and she held him for hours. When he finally left, the front of their clothes were stained red, a shade darker than before.


	4. Names

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Kira's not about to let Julian die so easily._

Things were different after that. Julian’s nurses no longer looked at him with fondness or friendly admiration. There was a shadow in them now, in the way they looked at him, as if they were all just waiting for him fall away to dust at any second. They weren’t too far off the mark with that, though, so he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry or hurt. Still, he found his temper around them was shorter than it once was, and he often criticized small errors more harshly than he would had he not been dying. They said nothing of his unfair treatment, just stared back at him with sorrow and pity, even as they went about fixing their mistakes.

Julian wished they would snap back at him, just once, if only to wake him from the nightmare that was his new reality. But they continued to tiptoe around him, and he continued to fall apart, and his heart kept bleeding darker and darker.

“You can’t just contact him and tell him how you feel?” Kira asked one day during lunch in the replimat, a firm set to her jaw and an intensity in her gaze that had once been reserved for missions and counterattacks in times of war.

Julian ducked his head, pushing his salad around with his fork with a halfhearted interest. His neck prickled under the gazes of the many people around them. “I’m not going to,” he replied as quietly as he could.

“ _Why_?” Kira demanded fiercely, her anger flaring to life in her eyes.

“ _Rejection_ ,” he hissed back just as fiercely. Before she had time to berate him about how childish an excuse that was, he continued firmly. “Right now, I might have a year, Kira. But if he rejects me, I’ll have days. _Days_! Ensign Byrne succumbed a few days ago less than six hours after her own rejection. She allowed it, she knew not to fight, but… I am enhanced so It’ll be more long and drawn out for me - don’t give me that look, you’ll be damn sure I’ll fight it - but Kira…” Julian sighed. “I can’t see myself making it long past a day or two, if that’s what it comes to. I’ve spent more than half of my life treating patients with this disease. I know how this ends.”

“And if he loves you? What then?” 

“What am I supposed to do, just show up on Cardassia out of nowhere and say, ‘Hey, I realized I love you after you left, and now I’m stuck with a terminal disease that can only be cured by you loving me back, so can you declare your undying love for me, please?’ No! He had seven damn years to tell me he loved me if he did, but he never said a thing! I am his _friend_. I have no right to demand anything from him, especially a love he’s never had for me, and never _will_ have.”

“You have to do _something_ ,” Kira insisted.

“I am doing something, Kira,” he replied, stabbing at his salad a bit harder than necessary. “I'm doing my job until I can't anymore. I'm going to finish my will, I'm going to send my farewell letters to my friends and family, and then I'm going to make my death as painless as I possibly can while my heart tears itself apart.”

Kira stood abruptly, her fist coming down on the table with enough force to move everything several inches over. “Damn it, Julian!” She shouted. “I'm not just gonna sit here and watch you die! I've lost everyone I care about, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna lose you too! Don't you care at all?!”

The replimat fell into a strained hush.

“Of course, I _care_!” He defended loudly, dropping his fork. “You think I wanted this? You think I asked to fall in love with the one person who could never love me back? Well, I didn't! My whole life, I've been so careful not to let anyone in too close, because I know the consequences. I see the outcome of love almost everyday, and it's not pretty. It's not _romantic_. It's cruel and it's sad and it's _tragic_.” Julian sighed tiredly, leaning back in his chair and rubbing a hand over his eyes. “The Vulcans, the human race’s closest relatives in the galaxy, had to purge their own emotions to avoid this, and even they have failed spectacularly at that. I'm just human, Kira. I'm only _human_.”

Kira stared back for a long moment, and Julian was afraid she'd try to fight him more on the matter. He didn't think he had the energy left to handle it. Then her gaze drifted downward and her eyes went wide. Faintly, he registered the familiar burning sensation in his chest. He looked down and saw blood seeping through his uniform, creating a long maroon streak down his torso. If everyone hadn’t been staring at him before, they were now. He could hear them whisper.

Kira lowered slowly back into her seat, averting her gaze to her clasped hands on the table. “A year, right?”

“Maybe,” he responded. He glanced down at the blood again and muttered, “If I don’t bleed out first.” He paused, then continued. “But only if my calculations are correct. Most of my species don’t make it past eight months. My augmentation will delay it for awhile, but it’ll be a struggle, and it’ll be painful.”

Kira took a deep, steadying breath. “Nerys,” she whispered.

“... Okay?”

“Just call me Nerys,” she said, stronger. “I call you Julian, it’s only fair you call me by my given name. I should think, after all this time, we’re past the surnames.”

Julian nodded, sending a small, tentative smile her way. “Alright, Nerys.”

Nerys didn’t return the smile. She sat stiff and silent, staring at the table with a shadow behind her eyes, bottom lip caught firmly between her teeth. The fight wasn't over.


	5. Aggrieved

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Julian has a less than pleasant talk with his parents._

Weeks passed by in which Julian did his best to manage his slowly but steadily increasing symptoms, and before he knew it, two months had passed since Garak's departure from the station. He kept his head down, did his work, and watched with some strange mix of anxiety and relief as the gossip and whispers died down, replaced with the occasional pitying look whenever he passed someone by. For the most part, people seemed to move on. Humans died from love all the time, after all, and he was just another in a long line of bleeding hearts.

He drafted several letters over those weeks, each informing a friend or family member personally of his condition. He said he loved them, that they couldn't have saved him and not to beat themselves up over it, and that he was sorry it had to end this way. He planned to send each one separately, days apart, starting with his parents. That way, he had the time to prepare to respond to each without having them all bombard him at once. 

By the time they were all finished and ready, he hadn't even started Garak's, though not from lack of trying. He had spent hours staring at an empty PADD, thinking of all the things he had to say, but unable to put them into words. He had indeed been trying his best not to think of the Cardassian too much - a nearly impossible task, considering his heart's insidious need to remind him every few hours.

The video call came the evening after he sent the letter to his parents. Despite having known what to expect, he Julian could not stop his breath catching painfully in his chest when Amsha Bashir began to cry. Whatever reservations he had about his parents, he knew his mother, at least, loved him dearly, and he hated to see her cry. Especially from something so common and devastating as a Bleeding Heart.

Richard Bashir, though in better control of himself, still managed to look a fair bit upset, but Julian could find none of the guilt or remorse for him that he had found for his mother. _My father_ , he thought bitterly, _for all his efforts, could not make me perfect enough to escape being human. This is only the last in a long line of failures._

“Please, Jules,” his mother wept. “Please, come home.”

How he wished he could tell her what she wanted to hear. But Julian had stopped that habit the moment the two had accidentally outed him and his augmentation. He wasn't about to start again now. “I can't, mother. I'm sorry.”

“You belong home, son, with your family,” his father said.

“I _can't_ ,” Julian said, more firmly. Then he saw the look on his mother's face - the anguish, the pain. He was her only son, and she was going to lose him without a chance to hug him and give him a proper goodbye. He couldn't blame her for her distress. With a weary sigh, he conceded. “I'll think it over, alright? Just… just let me work through this. It's my death, too, you know.”

“Was it the Trill girl?” His father asked accusingly.

“No. Ezri has absolutely nothing to do with this.” Julian said slowly, wary.

“What about the other one… Kira, was it?” his mother asked, doing her best to wipe her tears and compose herself.

“No, mom! It’s not - we’re not - Nerys isn’t like that to…” Julian cut himself off, closing his eyes and taking a long, deep breath through his nose. “Look, Nerys is my friend. She isn’t the cause. Would you stop prying? Please? I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Julian, we just -” His mother began, but his father cut her off.

“We deserve to know who killed our son.” His father said coldly, his jaw clenching tighter with each word.

Julian stiffened, his fingers curling into a fist on the console. “I’m not _dead_ yet,” he said scathingly, “and no one’s _killed_ me.” He stared pointedly at his father. “Perhaps my genetics are to blame.” He had a moment to watch his mother’s eyes go wide in shock and his father to look away, pained, before he viciously jabbed a button to end the call.

He let the silence sink into him for a moment before he slumped, sighing and pinching his brow in a futile attempt to alleviate the ache there. He wished he could tell himself that the others wouldn’t be so difficult, but he wasn’t in the habit of lying to himself, and he wasn’t going to start now that he was dying.

_‘We deserve to know who killed our son.’_

He paused for a moment, then internally scolded himself for the hesitation. Garak hadn’t killed him. He had nothing to do with Julian’s genetic flaws and wayward heart. He didn’t blame him - he _wouldn’t_ blame him - it was no one’s fault but his own. He _knew_ better, after all, and yet here he was.

Julian went to bed early that night, curled around Kukalaka with his eyes pinched tightly shut. Nightmares of the future mixed with memories of the past assaulted him one by one. When he awoke, he remembered only pale blue eyes, a secretive smile, and the ever present blood on his chest tainted black.


	6. Shifting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Julian says goodbye and dreams._

In the end, it had taken him two more weeks to get through the last of the letters and discussions, and it left him feeling more drained than ever a long shift at the infirmary had done. Ezri had, predictably, cried softly and repeatedly told him she was sorry, even though he kept telling her that it wasn't to blame. She asked him if he wanted her to come back. He told her no, and she was hurt but understanding, and that was that.

Miles had been devastated, and then he had gotten angry. Julian had to tell him no less than three times that it wasn't Ezri who had caused his sickness before he would quit loudly blaming her. Keiko had been a big help with that, and when he had finally calmed down, she had ended the call with a promise that they would both scrape together a visit to the station within the next couple months. He was grateful. It would be nice to play darts with the chief again, just one last time.

It was during the call with Jake, Nog and Kassidy that Julian's heart had begun to bleed.

Jake and Nog had waited until Kassidy wasn’t busy with doctor's appointments before they video called so that they could all talk to him together. Their small shared apartment in San Francisco was light and sunny and strewn with Benjamin's possessions, though he was no longer with them. Jake had begun the call by saying that he was lucky he had sent the letter when he did, since Nog was leaving to serve on a starship the next day. Nog had apologized for not being able to see Julian in person, and Jake had to stay and finish his first novel and look after Kassidy, or he would board the next transport to the station. 

All three expressed their sorrow at his condition, and both Kassidy and Jake's eyes began to water when he felt the familiar burn in his chest. “You'll be in my book, Doctor,” he promised earnestly. 

Nog hung his head, whispering to himself, “It's purple. It's already _purple_.” When Jake elbowed him, he looked up, his smile shaky. “Thank you, Doctor Bashir,” he said, with approving nods from the others. “For everything.”

Somehow, out of everything his friends and family had said to him, those words felt the most final. When Julian turned off the console, his hands trembled. 

All who was left to contact was Garak.

For three more days after his last correspondence, Julian put off writing to him until finally (largely at the prompting of Nerys), he forced himself to set aside an evening just for that purpose. However, he soon realized this task would not be so simple. He couldn't bring himself to write about his feelings. He couldn't even begin to try and explain his current situation.

The end result, small and concise and to the point, contained only friendly greetings, minimal details about the last few months on the station, and the wellbeing of their friends and former colleagues as he knew it. He ended the communication with well wishes and enquiries as to Garak's health and whereabouts. Though it wasn't a sizable letter and Julian had begun rather early in the evening, it had left him with a headache worse than the one after the call with his parents, and went to bed far later than he normally would, even with his recent insomnia.

That night, the doctor dreamed he was pacing leisurely along the upper levels of the promenade with Garak at his side, looking out at the stars as they discussed the latest novels they had gotten each other to read. The dream was hazy, as most dreams are, filled with soft edges and faded details, the background out of focus and lost, accented only by the sharp light of the stars and the piercing blue of Garak's eyes when he looked at Julian. None of this bothered Dream Julian. He hardly noticed at all.

“What do you think, Doctor?” Garak asked softly through the veil of sleep.

Julian found himself unable to conjure any details of the conversation beforehand. “I think I have made a grave mistake, Mister Garak,” he said instead.

“Have you?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I should have known better.”

“Known better,” Garak repeated, as if testing the feel of the words on his tongue. “No one ever really knows better, do they? No one ever knows anything at all, least of all you or me, though we try.”

“I'm sorry,” he says again.

Garaks gaze shifted across Julian's face, searching, leaving trails of color in their wake. “Do you regret me?” he asked.

“ _No_ ,” Julian responded surely.

“... Strange. You should.”

“I don't.”

“And yet you act as if you _do_ ,” Garak said pointedly.

Julian could not answer. They stood in silence amongst the shifting colors, staring at pinprick stars until Julian woke, alone


End file.
